Hollywood — Television had horrible ratings last year and one would figure that network execs might scramble and put together some amazing fare in this fall's schedule to save TV. Unfortunately, this year’s lineup includes some of the most disturbing shows ever to hit the small screen.

Leading the pack is NBC’s answer to CBS’s reality show Kid Nation, in which kids rule a Western ghost town and must learn how to survive on their own.   NBC’s spin-off, ConsterNation, explores the other end of the spectrum: Take 40 seniors, put them in one giant maze for 20 days, and see who can find their way out.

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"It's exactly how I think I remember summer camp being! — except for the cattle prods and tiger pits."
— Mary Ellen Richols, 85, ConsterNation participant

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To add insult to injury, the show’s producers dress the barely functioning seniors in rat costumes. The maze is rigged with electric fences to help prod America’s Greatest Generation along the way.  They encounter memory-straining tests which, if answered correctly, will reveal missing keys and glasses to help them access secret passageways; but if answered incorrectly, they might get a taste of a bear trap or fall into the tiger pit.

Along the way, participants are allowed to develop a unified system of navigation that’ll get all of them out of the maze together.  Judging by the premiere,  this doesn't seem likely to materialize.  You don’t get voted out of the maze (no one can remember who did what); the only way to leave is to remember how to get back to where you came from.  And the winner gets a blast of Cheez Whiz -- the show's sponsor.  ConsterNation has already taken a few hits for being abusive, but the network claims in a press release that “Many of our seniors had the time of their lives — they say it was just like summer camp!”  If you enjoy watching people suffer then NBC has one hell of a Friday night for you.

Medical shows like Grey’s Anatomy are perennial favs, and CBS gets in the game this fall.  Their new show, Up Yours, follows five proctology residents through the ins and outs of their training at an academic hospital in Minneapolis.  Most of the show revolves around people’s colons, like when two of the residents develop a romantic relationship and each pulls out sigmoidoscopes at the end of their date (their idea of getting fresh).  All this might seem dull, but the premiere episode’s gripping conclusion depicts a tube springing a leak during a procedure and the whole staff is showered with fecal matter as really cool music fades up and plays out to the bitter end as various residents, doctors and nurses kiss and grope one another.  It's a real hoot.  Critics will no doubt be taking full advantage of the abundant clichés available to trash this show, so let's get the first crack in: Up Yours stinks!

Cooking shows are big, so Courtney Loves to Cook would seem to make perfect sense as a cooking show, except that it’s really more of a drinking show.  Love brings her usual zaniness into the kitchen as she shows you how to make a bologna sandwich while ranting about how the government destroyed Nirvana.  Then she demonstrates how the sandwich goes down well with a bottle of vanilla extract, and also how to throw bottles at someone’s head with pinpoint accuracy.  Alcohol is definitely her favorite ingredient (perhaps she’s channeling Julia Child), but her combination of alcohol and fire don’t always mix well. Her grilled cheese sandwich flambé experiment is definitely watchable, especially when her alcohol-soaked apron catches fire and she thrashes around and wrecks the entire kitchen.

On the reality show front, Fox introduces Lost in Space Station, where a dozen young and vapid contestants blast off to the space station and are put to various tests in a zero-gravity environment: eating floating worms, peeing in a bucket, and french kissing upside down.  Even in outer space, there’s the typical amount of gossip and backstabbing, and when you get voted off you’re actually jettisoned into space with the line: “You’re outta here!”

And the popular new game show of the season is called Wheel of Misfortune, in which each turn of the wheel brings you calamity of one type or another: “Home Foreclosure” “Declare Bankruptcy” or “Vacation Trip From Hell.”  This show’s appeal is built upon Schadenfreude as the contestants’ hands are visibly shaking as they reach for the wheel.